Why You Can't Argue With Liberals

A few weeks ago I posted a rant about the craziness of "liberals". What I perceive as an inability to adequately debate with hard-line liberals is something that helped sway me away from Kerry, perhaps because in part because I very much don't want to be grouped together with ignorant Bush-haters. It's also another reason why I support and am proud to be part of the LCR, because they had the courage to stand up against their party and call them out when they are wrong.

Often, you'll be surprised to know, I read a liberal blog, Alas a Blog, which focuses on gay rights, feminism and abortion rights (only one of which I thoroughly agree with but the whole blog is written in such a rational, sane, and well-thought out way that I can't say anything bad about the moderators). This post impressed me, referencing Chris Crain of the Washington Blade taking the Stonewall Democrats (the Democratic version of the LCR) to task for not calling out Democrats on their poor gay rights records. Barry did a great job of hitting the nail on the head. If I liked Bible references I'd say something about a mote. But his commendation was met with harsh criticism from another, more typical liberal blog, This Space for Rent:

To continue with what has set me off, I think that comparing the Stonewall Democrats to the Log Cabin Republicans isn't a "good point", it's fucking ridiculous, and Chris Cain needs take that back. There just simply ians't a comparison between the Stonewalls, and the Log Cabins. The Stonewalls are brave enough to fight on the right side - The LCR just want to have their cake and eat it too.

Here's why: The LCR are not courageous by any standard of the word. They're a bunch of greedy sellouts who routinely support the party that has, built into their platform, a serious anti-gay rights agenda, because they're happy to screw poor people in order to keep more money after taxes. They're assholes....

The LCR are self-haters who value their pocketbooks over their personal dignity. It isn't as though the Republican Anti-gay agenda is some super secret stealth platform - it's part and parcel to being a Republican, much like supporting dangerous tax cuts and privatizing everything under the sun. There simply isn't anything resembling a serious debate in the Republican party about it, except amongst marginalized and impotent moderates and so-called Liberal republicans. Face it people - when you register republican, you ARE AGREEING with their platform.

So in otherwords, if you register for a party you are agreeing one-hundred percent and endorsing one-hundred percent everything that that party stands for. And if you disagree with one thing your party says, who I would hope embodies many of your own philosophies that may or may not be related to who you are fucking, the brave thing to do is the abandon the party entirely and go onto the "right side". Basically if you are a gay Republican you are (to borrow a phrase) an abused puppy who is rich, votes with your checkbook, and has no personal dignity whatsoever. It surprises me that this asswipe hasn't called for the couragous party abandonment of every single congressman who has ever voted against their party platform because obviously they should be agreeing with each and every point since they are registered for that party. Oh, wait. It's not because he's principled or anything, he just hates Republicans.

Ok, let's have a spirited, rational debate about it! That is, of course, if someone so rational and enlightened as this dickwad should even bother to attempt to be rational with an obviously self-hating, money-grubbing, screw-the-poor abused puppy. I mean, seriously, does any rational gay even think that privitization is good, even though it is mostly private companies with private health insurance that give benefits to same-sex spouses? Nah, big government will take care of us, just like it has done in the past....

Now I don't mean to be channeling Ann Coulter, nor do I mean to imply that all liberals are as bigoted and blind as this guy, but this is far from the first time that I've heard crap like this, and in more reasonable arenas. This kind of idiotic ranting is excrutiatingly unproductive. But the Republicans at least have room for descention in the ranks; I can name at least two prime RNC speakers who were pro-choice. Try to name one pro-life Dem who spoke at the DNC.

And you know, if someone truly doesn't believe in a tax cut that they've been granted by the government, they could always voluntarily pay more....

I've Finally Made Up My Mind

For those of you who don't actually believe that one week before the election a voter could still be undecided, I submit that I indeed was pretty much undecided up until recently.

Bush was attractive to me because of his moral victories in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and his willingness not to kowtow to international pressures, especially the increasingly corrupt U.N. But he continues to remain unattractive to me for his fiscal irresponsibility, his constant attacks on civil liberties, his inept policies on science and science funding, and his willingness to pander to the religious right. And his last minute admission of support for civil unions for gays is insultling.

And yet, John Kerry, for all his successes in the debates, is still a (dare I fall into talking point cliches?) tax-and-spend liberal. The No-Child-Left-Behind Act has failed miserably, but Kerry isn't necessarily better. Bush's healthcare reform platform is flawed, but Kerry's isn't necessarily better. Kerry might be able to handle the international community with more finesse than Bush, but I don't want Germany pressuring me into who I choose to lead my country. And besides, France and Germany have already said that even if Kerry wins they are definitely not sending troops. The one place where the Democrats fare better than the Republicans, usually, is on gay rights, but when it comes down to it, Kerry is, um (fuck I'm going to do it again) a flip-flopper with no clear position. And I hate to sound like some radical traditionalist, there is absolutely no reason why Kerry should have to slavishly adhere to a pro-choice agenda in order to gain votes. Of course, when it comes to the seamless garmet of life, then-governor Bush had stepped up the death penalty rather than curtail it, or keep it at its status quo.

So really, what is a boy to do? Especially a boy who lives in one of the bluest states this side of the Mississippi, where (cliche number 3!) my vote really doesn't matter. Nader? Ha! He really should stick to consumer advocacy; its more becoming than his desparate pleas for legitimacy. Cobb? Dartmouth notwithstanding, Green is so not my color. That leaves one choice, my friends.

Michael Badnarik.

I know, I know, the man is absolutely off his rocker. And he seemed to come out of nowhere to get the Libertarian nomination. But more so than not I find myself agreeing with each and every point of the Libertarian platform. Sure Badnarik hasn't paid his income tax in years, plans on blowing up the U.N. on his eighth day of his presidency, and believes that prisoners should spend their first month of incarceration in bed so that their muscles will atrophy and the guards would be able to handle them easier. Sure, he's more of a right-wing constitutionalist than your run-of-the-mill moderate-to-right libertarian, but he's changing. Now that he has an actual influential voice, he realizes he doesn't need grass-roots civil disobedience in order to get his views across. And the LP has shaped him into a respectable candidate.

But that's really not the point. The real decision will be made by people who actually like one of the two main candidates or people who are too tired with the system to bother look outside. And the Libertarian Party needs a voice. Right now there is no place for a small-government, social liberal, fiscally conservative, pro-life, gay scientist in either party. The Republicans have hope, which is why I am not switching party affiliations, and will continue to work towards inclusion in the GOP. But unlike Andrew Sullivan, I haven't been able to jump on the Kerry bandwagon, even this late in the game.

So, call me crazy. Make accusations about third party votes. Tell me I'm copping out. Tell me I'm no better than those wacko Greens or that I'm fucking up the election like Perot or Nader supporters. But at least I know that I will have voted for someone who has the balls to say that he thinks the death penalty starts and ends at 2am in an ATM booth when some guy is trying to steal your money, rather than someone who thinks those decisions should be left up to the government.

This has been an emotionally exhausting process and for anyone who still is bewildered as to how it could take someone this long to make up their mind, in the spirit of the Third of the Month and in the words of Dick Cheney, go fuck yourself.

Take That, Stanley Kurtz!

William N. Eskridge Jr., Darren R. Spedale, and Hans Ytterberg recently published a paper, a real, honest-to-goodness academic paper about same-sex marriage in Scandinavia entitled Nordic Bliss? Scandinavian Registered Partnerships and the Same-Sex Marriage Debate. And you know what? Surprise, surprise, Stanley Kurtz's disengenuous and statistically corrupt social scientific arguments are completely refuted.

After detailing three features of marriage that have been liberalized in the past 50 years, alternatives to marriage, state regulation of marital sex, and exit from marriage, they contrast it with the expansion of marriage eligibility, namely same-sex marriage. And then they (rightly) nail Kurtz:

There is another kind of problem with Kurtz’s mutual reinforcement

argument. After decades of catering to straight people’s desires to have the

advantages of marriage without its costs, through cohabitation regimes and nofault

divorce, it is unfair to draw the line with gay and lesbian couples, the group

whose choices have been least honored by the state. If you really want to combat

the expanded choice norm, it would be much more powerful to revoke no-fault

divorce or cohabitation regimes and reintroduce Features 1 (marriage monopoly)

and 3 (lifetime obligations) into the law. Astoundingly, these are the two reforms

Kurtz explicitly avoids. “So repealing no-fault divorce, or even eliminating

premarital cohabitation, are not what’s at issue.”31 As Kurtz explains the fate of

marriage, American society should swallow the liberalizations we have already

adopted to accommodate the choices straight people want to have, even though

this expanded-choice regime significantly undermines marriage and facilitates

divorce—and should rescue marriage from decline by denying gay people

eligibility for it, even though it is highly speculative that such denial would have

any effect on the institution. This is not only direct discrimination. It is hypocrisy.

After all of that, they show, with little statistical uncertainty, that registered partnerships in Denmark and Sweden cannot be even casually correlated with the "end of marriage".

If state-recognized same-sex partnerships “contributed” to the decline of marriage

and the rise of illegitimacy, even if indirectly by reinforcing an expanded-choice

norm, we would expect to see (ceteris paribus) something more than falling

marriage rates, rising divorce rates, and rising non-marital birth rates in Denmark

after 1989 and in Sweden after 1994; those were the trends before 1989 and 1994.

Rather, we should expect to see marriage rates falling faster, divorce rates

accelerating upward, and a surge in non-marital birth rates. The data reveal no

such trend. Not only do the registered partnership laws in Denmark and Sweden

not correlate to super-normal plunges in marriage rates and super-elevated divorce

rates, but some of the trends move in the other direction.

This doesn't even get close to how they tear apart his derogatory mis-use of the of term "out-of-wedlock births" and inconsistencies with his various other definitions, like constantly refering to registered partnerships as marriages, even though up until last year registered parnters (hetero or homo) could not adopt children or get state-assisted artificial insemination. In short, Kurtz really needs to be taken to task for his blatant abuse of his "academic" findings, especially since he's been testifying in front of Congress with his, to put it as bluntly as I can, lies. To continue to deny that Kurtz has an agenda and his work is utterly biased should be taken as either blind ignorance or rampant homophobia.

Unelected Judges

In the debate over gay marriage, I often hear the terms "activist judge" or "unelected judge" tossed around. The former I consider to be a real problem, although I don't believe that a majority of accusations of an activist judiciary are really acts of legislation from the bench. The latter, however, really pisses me off. It's as if no one ever took civics in junior high. The last time I checked the judiciary was an equal branch of our government, our representational democracy. The way the terms get tossed about it's as if these judges emerge inexplicibly from the ether and indiscriminately pass judgement on an unwilling populus, unsure of where they came from or how they got there.

Well, pick a state constitution, any constitution. Or the federal one for that matter. In it, I guarantee you'll find instructions on how the judiciary is formed. Just because some judges aren't selected directly by the people in an at large election does not mean that they aren't a product of our democratic republic, a set of laws that can be changed at any time by the people, provided that is that they follow the Rule of Law. Now, I personally like an unelected judiciary, since an elected one like we have here in New York is often surrounded by accusations of partisan politicking.

And it's not as if these judges are the only "unelected" officials that have power in our system. I have never, ever heard Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice referred to as those "unelected secretaries", but they still have a shitload of power. In fact, Ashcroft, an unelected official, has as much power to pick and choose what cases he'd like to prosecute as the judiciary gets to select what cases it wants to hear. And if you think that the Attorney General doesn't play politics, you've got your head buried so far up your ass that I can't imagine how you even found your way onto the internet. But it doesn't matter, because every single judge in this country got there as a result of our elective process, some way or another.

So you might not like the fact that you don't get to hand-pick the judges who sit on the bench. You might not like the fact that you can't just kick them out when you don't like they way they interpret a law (which by the way, last time I checked was, um, their job). But to criticize their legitimacy based on their "unelected" status is to show a fundamental lack of understanding of our government. I'd expect that of a kindergartener, but from "educated" political pundits?

America, Fuck Yeah!

So last night I saw Team America: World Police, the latest offering from Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I thought it was going to be heavy on the politics. But not really. It was pretty much all about how much Hollywood sucks, from its crappy movies to its crappy politics to its crappy self-importance. And about how utterly worthless Alec Baldwin is. It was shear genius. Genuis, I tell you. If you have any sort of sane worldview, you will laugh you ass off. And then you will cry. Cry because it is all too embarassingly true.

Liberals Are Crazy

So last night I went to a debate hosted by FSIX, a group interested in foster gay and lesbian equality in the financial sector, and cosponsered by the HRC entitled "LGBT in the Two Party System". I had absolutely no idea what it was going to be like, but Chris Barron of the LCR was one of the debators and I like hearing him speak. For some unknown reason it was in the middle of a design showroom, so I sat on a bed and the debators sat on chairs with price tags showing.

Barron debated Rachel Maddow of Air America's morning show "Unfiltered". And I came to the conclusion that liberals are, um, crazy. First of all, Maddow began by claiming to have no affiliation with the Democrats and was not there to slump for them. She ended up saying, and I'm not making this up, that no gay or lesbian should ever vote for a Republican, period. Why, you might ask? Because even by supporting gay-friendly Republicans, you end up giving control of the legislature to the Evil Republicans and only their agendas get pushed through. So we shouldn't reward the good Republicans because Bill Frist might stay in power. Um, homo say what? To paraphrase Barron, why should I give up my views on scores of other issues that are important to me, like trade, national security, healthcare and taxes, issues that have nothing to do with my sexuality? No, we just can't let the Republicans have any power.

But what about reaching across the aisle by having friends on both sides? According to Maddow it's not necessary because gay Republicans are like abused puppies, sorry dogs, that just keep going back to their owners who kick them. And her answer to reach out across the aisle? We shouldn't have elected Republicans in the first place. Not slumping for Democrats, my ass. And while she begrudgingly agreed that we should reward moderate Republicans, she rebuked us for not attempting to punish the bad ones who vote against gay equality. But when Barron pulled out a slew of Democrats who voted for the FMA and who are championing "traditional" marriage and asked how her party was punishing them, she didn't have an answer. Oooh, I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning. But, she didn't really see it as hypocrisy because, according to her, ounce for ounce Democrats have a better record than Republicans. Oh, and she firmly believes that a gay rights organization should have the word "gay" in its name. Give me a fucking break. She also managed to stereotype Republicans as rich bankers. What a way to push for non-discrimination. But what do you really expect from a butch dyke from Massachusetts? (Hey, she insinuated I was a banker, I can call her a dyke).

And the questions from the audience? A conservative audience member pointed out that it was through gay Republicans lobbying Pataki to strong-arm Joe Bruno that the legislater has finally provided domestic partnerships statewide, and he asked how that would have been done without allies in the Republican party. What was Maddow's answer? Don't elect Republicans in the first place. Yeah, try telling that the conservatie majority who live upstate. But what were the liberal questions like? Well, not questions really. One lengthy comment was to brow-beat Barron into admiting he was an abused puppy and all his efforts to make the Republican party more inclusive were fruitless, while another one tried to get him to admit that he had Freudian issues with his father's (Bush's) approval.

I fucking hate liberals.

The Internet Has Everything...

Sexually transmitted diseases are a big problem, especially among the gay community in big cities. So you've already hooked up with dozens of people when it turns out you've come down with the clap. You get a pang of guilt. How do I tell all these people I might have caused them to burn like hellfire when they take a whiz? I can't do it face to face since it's too embarassing. E-mailing them would be better but I don't want to be ostracized. Whatever is a boi to do?

Well, San Francisco has the answer. Anonymous e-cards! Hey, you've been screwed!

The sad thing is, there are enough people in this boat to warrant this website. And it's not a joke. I don't mean to make light of people's plights, and young people especially make mistakes since they often feel immortal or liberated right after coming out. But dude, if you're going to be a slut, wear a fucking condom. And if you don't want to wear a fucking condom, find someone you like and get married. Oh wait....

And Speaking of Nobels...

Go ubiquitination!

Another One Bites the Dust

First it was Rosalind Franklin, back in the day. A few months ago it was Crick. Now, sadly, Maurice Wilkins, that other guy who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA passed away this week, at the tender age of 88. I'm beginning to believe they're going in order of talent. And if I'm correct that means Watson's going to live forever...

And in the South...

Today a Louisiana judge threw out the anti-marriage equality (don't you love that double-speak?) amendment passed last month, based on the constitutional requirement that all amendments serve one purpose and one purpose only. I can almost hear the screams of liberal judicial activism right now. Wait. What was that? The judge was a Republican? Wait, he must have caved in to some emotional Brownshirt manipulations by sympathetic gay plantiffs. Wait, what was that? He said, "This is a matter of law. Emotions do not, will not play a part in this court's ruling"??? But... but... but...!!! Ah judicial activism judicial activism judicial activism!!! Whew, I feel better now. Wow, my mommy was right; if I say something enough times I can force myself to believe it.

An Unlikely Ally

Proponents of same-sex marriage bans, especially the poorly worded ones, like to claim that their proposals are only meant to protect marriage and won't have any other over-reaching effects on private contracts, etc. Then why, pray tell, is the AARP opposing the SSM amendment in Ohio? Yep, that's right, the AARP. As in old people. As in people, when polled, are generally around 80% in favor of banning same-sex marriage. Why on earth would they propose an amendment that is in-line with their opinions. Oh wait:

“State Issue One would deny property ownership rights, inheritance, pensions, power of attorney and other matters of vital interest to the health and well being of unmarried older couples," AARP Ohio said in a statement.

But I thought it was only supposed to stop gay marriage?

Intelligent Science?

I have no idea how this little piece of information slipped under my radar, especially since I've been preparing to give a workshop on Intelligent Design v. Darwinism (don't worry, I'm going to come heavily down on ID if I can), but it appears as though a peer-reviewed journal has published an article in support of ID. Now granted, it is in a very low-impact journal for taxonomists, and has adequately been debunked, but it gives credibility to the movement which is largely just Creationism warmed over.

What I can't understand is how legitimate scientists get caught up in this trap. The Theory of Evolution is a scientific theory because it asks specific questions that can be proven or disproven. It makes no claims on the origins of life. I understand how some religious people may feel uncomfortable about evolution being one big string of epistatic accidents, but why put limits on the power of God? Since He's omnipotent and omniscient, why couldn't He have perfectly planned the architecture of life with random chance as one of its driving principles? Why do we have to constantly be finding jobs for God to do and try to fit Him into our feeble, limited worldview? And why do we have to co-opt science to make ourselves feel better about our faith? I can understand this crap from the Fundies, but there are a lot of other people jumping on the band-wagon, apparently because reconciling molecular evolution with a divine creator is too challenging. Well so is the Mystery of the Holy Trinity and Jesus's divinity and I don't see anyone coming up with stupid pseudo-theological theories about that (besides the Mormons, or course).

Intelligent Design is not science. It is a flawed misinterpretation of science and an incorrect application of the scientific method. It has to frequently ignore scientific evidence in order to proport the things it does and by allowing it into a scientific journal it does more damage to science than leaving it out does damage to religion. Some people can look at evolution and philosophize that God does not exist. Some people can look at evolution and be even more reassured than before that God indeed exists. And some people can point to evolution and say it was aliens who made us. There is no limit to the philosophies of the human mind. But no one can point to evolution and say confidently that it is proof of their philosophical position.

A casual observer might note that evolution seems to remain silent on the philosophies of Man. But that is exactly how science is meant to operate. It should report only what is testable and remain neutral to the philosophies of its handlers. Intelligent Design, however, does not, which means that ID has absolutely no place in a scientific journal, let alone in a science classroom.

Happy (Belated) Third of the Month!

I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to wish you all a Happy Third of the Month on it's actual blessed day, but I was in Boston. I celebrated the beauty that is me yesterday by not taking the bus back, a bus that no doubt would have been full of people crazier (if possible) than on my ride up. Instead I gave myself a treat and went business-class Amtrak and by golly it's really the only way to travel (short of the shuttle which I can never afford). Yeah, I know it's pricey but when you get back instead of being tired because you've been sitting next to some insane woman reading self-help books and taking diligent notes or behind a man who insists on having his seat all the way back, even though he spends half the time leaning forward, you are actually rested because you've had a nice, leisurely snack of cheese and crackers and wine have watched the sun set over the Connecticut coastline. And you get free soda! It really does make everything better. And then when you get home you can watch The Wire and not be grouchy.

So remember, whether or not it is the Third of the Month, or the fourth of the month, or the twenty-fourth of the month, love yourself. Love yourself, because everyone else loves you and you wouldn't want to be the only one left out. Love yourself because love is what the world needs now and there's just so little of it and you wouldn't want to spread it around too liberally and not have anything left over for yourself, now would you? Love yourself because you can't trust other people to do it for you, even though they really should cuz you kick ass. And love yourself because when you're used to loving yourself it helps make loving everyone else just a little bit easier. And like I said before, the world needs love. Love, sweet love.

And plaid. The world definitely needs plaid. And moist towellettes. Oh, and cheese. But not the kind with weird fruits or nuts or stuff in it; that shit's just weird.

Defend Traditional Marriage!

The Faithful Skeptic wants to defend "traditional" marriage. Hiliarious!

Similarly, I've never liked the term traditional marriage, because it tends to lead to disengenious arguments about the state of modern marriage and its links to ancient or older traditions. But I'm hard-pressed to find another one. However I will say that the best PC term I've heard to date was from the New York Times last month: 2-sex Marriage.

Two Guys, a Camaro and an Alpaca

This weekend the boy and I to the Homaro into Guilford, CT for some apple- and raspberry-picking. For some reason he got it into his head that he wanted to do a lot of baking this week and I got into my head that you can't make a proper apple pie if you don't pick your own apples (similarly, if you can't harvest your own mussels you should make sure that the ones you buy from your fishmonger were grown on a rope in the middle of a fjord). So off we went, picking about 35 lbs of apples and 3 lbs of raspberries.

Now I love raspberries, but we had to cart them back to New York on a train and since we were rushing to catch it we didn't have time to put it in a proper bag or something so they were sitting open in a carboard container. Right next to me. So I picked at them. The whole ride home. For those of you who have never eaten a pound of raspberries in one sitting you have absolutely no idea the kind of upset stomach and noxious gas that they induce. It was also amusing to be lugging 35 lbs of apples and (now) 2 lbs of raspberries down 125th St. to the subway. We had a few people eyeing us suspiciously, a few people eyeing us confuddled, and one woman on Metro North eyeing us longingly, hoping against hope that I might miss one of the apples I kept dropping on the seat.

In the end we got to make a delicious raspberry tart and a (hopefully delicious) apple-raspberry pie. And since we have approximately 32 lbs of apples left, I see a few more pies, streussels and tarts in my future. And probably a lot more gas...

Must See TV

After a less than stellar dinner at Wondee Siam II (Wondee Siam I was packed and their sister restaurant across the street isn't nearly as good (can we say $10 corking fee?!)) I was tired and headed home where I watched a little TV before crashing early. I caught a bit of The Apprentice, but like to wait until Saturdays to see it because they have amazing, juicy extra footage from the board room. Trump still kicks ass. As does Carolyn (if not more so this season). I never warmed up to George. This season, my money's on Pamela or Ivana (although her name might put her at a disadvantage). I can't get behind any of the men, although I'd like to get behind a few of them, if you know what I mean (oh, smack!).

But afterwards I slid back into my old standbys for an evening alone, South Park and the Daily Show. I don't know how or why I'd missed this, but the South Park episode where the kids go on a Lord of the Rings quest to get the One Video (the porno Backyard Sluts 9 in a LOTR box) back to the video store is pure genius. Genius. Although less genius then when Jon Stewart suggested to Gwenyth Paltrow that she let his kid bang hers. His newborn and her newborn. I have a feeling that Gwenyth won't be accepting any more invitations to appear on the Daily Show.....

Area Code Misery

Well, I finally did it. Today, I canceled my ground line. My blessed phone number, that 212 with such an easy, rhythmic feel to it that I had it memorized in less than 10 seconds, that wonderful, wonderful phone number that I'd had for four blessed years, that number that I finally got purged from most telemarketing lists so for the first time in just under two years I've been able to sleep past 8:15 on the weekends, that fantastic ten digit number will soon belong to someone else.

Please, join me in a moment of silence.

Now you may weep openly with me, so I don't look like a pansy all by myself.

Relaxation...

So I haven't blogged in a while because I've been out of town a good deal. Since I didn't get a chance to get a real summer vacation, and since summer was ending, I decided it was time to relax. And relax I did! My relaxation reached fairly epic proportions at one point.

I shall begin with Labor Day weekend. I decided to join the boy and his fam in a cabin in Georgia. We started relaxing early on Thursday by renting the gayest car on the planet, the PT Cruiser, against our will. We relaxed for 16 straight hours in which we made many relaxing detours through various inner cities in an attempt to find a multitude of Starbucks Skyline mugs. We paused briefly from our relaxation in North Carolina since too much relaxing in a PT (Poon-Tang) Cruiser is bad for your health.

The cabin was in a loverly spot in the Blue Ridge Mountains, far away from everything, which meant we spent most of our time having his sister, our Relaxation Coordinator, driving to various spots of relaxation, where we enjoyed a non-stop barage of relaxing mountain activities such as rafting a class 4 rapids, galloping through the woods on a flatulent horse for two hours, and trying to stay afloat on an inner tube in a chin-deep river travelling forty miles an hour while trying not to spill our beer. So blissfully relaxing!

When we weren't doing such relaxing outdoorsy events, we were relaxing in front of the Weather Channel in an attempt not to wonder if the boy's parents (who live in Florida) would have a house to go back to after their relaxing vacation.

After a few days of this, we decided it was time to relax some more, so we piled back into the gay-wad mobile and drove back to New York. I then got to wake up 6 hours later so I could get to work early, scrample to get my poster ready for my conference and then get up even earlier the next day to spend the rest of the weekend relaxing on the Cape. And by relaxing I mean going to relaxingly long talks about phophatydalinositol involvement in cell signaling, without a break, from 6pm on Wednesday until noon on Saturday. Literally. Which was wonderful because who wants relaxing activities like an hour long lecture about PIP2 binding to FYVE domains in an un-airconditioned auditorium with 127-year-old wooden seats to be interrrupted by something as horrible as sunny weather and all-you-can-eat-oyster bars?

It's a good thing that I got to relax so much because when I got back to work I was saddled with the wonderful job of training our new technician, which means that if my vacation hadn't been relaxing and I wasn't terribly eager to jump right back into my own work and try to get the hell out of graduate school in a reasonable amount of time, I wouldn't really have been able to anyway.

Oh well. At least I know I'm never buying a PT Cruiser.

That Box Turtle's Lookin' Fine...

Apparently if you want to marry a box turtle and make sure he gets insurance, just go work for Home Depot.

The Human Rights Campaign today condemned Home Depot, Sprint, Ecolab and Waste Management — all Fortune 500 companies — for offering their employees pet insurance but not domestic partner health insurance.

“Paying for a parrot’s but not a person’s hospital stay is absurd,” said HRC President Cheryl Jacques. “This is no joke. Employees deserve better from these companies.”

John Cornyn would be proud.

An Absolutely Positively 100% Guaranteed Way To Piss Off Your Lover/Partner/Spouse/Trick/Prostitute/RNC Delegate:

Out of the blue, laugh uncontrollably during sexual intercourse.... Or grow facial hair.

ThirdoftheMonthless

I regret to inform you, my loyal readers (I think there are more than one of you) that this Third of the Month you are going to have to go without my words of wisdom, for alas I shall be out of touch with civilization (Georgia) where I will be spending Labor Day weekend in the mountains. So if you come looking for some Third of the Month advice on Friday, just click here. That should cover you in a pinch.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Within the past year I've switched from getting my haircut at my local barber (who I never really liked but went to support the fact that he had issues of Playboy in the waiting area) to using a more stylish "unisex salon." It's marginally more expensive but I get a marginally better haircut, so I don't miss Jack's so much. What I do miss, however, is the lather. Any guy who gets his hair cut from an old-school barber knows what I'm talking about, that little machine that looks thirty years old and pumps out the warmest, thickest, creamiest shaving cream ever. Then they rub it into your neckline and sideburns and take a straight-edge razor to your bare flesh and clean up the lines. Lo! how I do miss that wonderful sensation. Instead, these "salons" use that fancy-wancy electric razor that goes scrape scrape scrape along your tender, dry neckline. And it isn't nearly as clean and sexy. It's enough to make me want to go back to Jack's. Well, that and the Playboy.

Gays Will Be Gays

It's not very often that the Republican National Convention comes to a place like New York City, so I've felt compelled to participate. That is the reason I ended up at an RNC event last night. Well, OK, that and the free booze. It was hosted by the Human Rights Campaign and Victory in association with the Log Cabin Republicans. And it was in Chelsea. Which means it was pretty gay. Sure, it was a bunch of gay Republicans and so they were dressed slightly less whorish than your average queer, but when push came to shove, everyone else was there for the free booze as well. And by the end of the evening it had more or less turned into any gay bar in the city, only with more neckties.

And as I said, gays will be gays. When Rep. Christopher Shays (from my homestate!) made a comment about his very young looking college intern (who was in the room) having to lick envelopes, the guy behind me said, quite audibly, "He can lick anything he wants..." I guess you can take the liberal out of the fag but you can't take the fag out of the Republican.

Area Code Angst

So for sixth months I've been paying for a phone line that I don't use because my phone is broken. I kept it around because I thought that some day I'd get a new computer and start using my dial-up service again. Now that I have a new computer, I've decided that dial-up is too slow and now I want Road Runner. I can't afford to pay for a high-speed internet connection and a phone I don't use. But....

I don't want to give up my 212 area code. Whatever is a boy to do?

Tashalee...

... is a big fat doody-head. Just thought you should know.

All My Sons

While certainly very similar in many respects, America and Britain can be worlds apart sometimes. Today we have Bush and Blair, who could never be mistaken for each other. But back in the day we had Reagan and Thatcher, two peas in a pod who worked steadfastedly to bring the threat of Communism crashing down. But what are their inheritors doing today? Fighting the good fight, of course. But in very different ways.

Ron Reagan, Jr. is fighting the good fight by being the poster-boy for embryonic stem cell research, thereby protecting the AARP from the grisly fate of senility. Mark Thatcher, on the other hand, is financing military coups to overthrow brutal African dictators, thereby protecting entire populations from massive human rights violations. Way to go, boys!

Big Couch Cushions...

... contain big amounts of change. Not feeling as if the selling of my bodily fluids would get me through the week, I finally decided to get rid of all of the change I've been collecting in my apartment. When I get home at the end of the day I usually just dump the change from my pockets either on the table, the floor or somewhere in my closet. Well, kiddies, last night I collected it all into a large mason jar and a Zip-Lock bag and this afternoon took it to Commerce Bank where they have this nifty little Penny Arcade. I returned just under three thousand coins for a grand total of $158.42.

All I can say is: I'm in the money! I'm in the money!

Cash Poor, Blood Rich

Right now I am cash poor. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not broke. I have plenty of money. I have a few checks on deposit, an approved loan that is stuck in paperwork and thousands of dollars of credit on my Visa card. Which is all fine and good for big things, like a computer or a sofa or a night at Sushi Samba. It's not OK for things like, oh, lunch which generally requires cash. Fortuantely for me, shortly before lunchtime I received a very important phone call from a guy in an immunology lab downstairs. You see, for certain scientific studies you need your cells to be fresh. Very fresh. And when I say very fresh, I mean straight out of the vein fresh. And fortunately for me, I got nice veins. Veins that earn $4 per 10 cc. And I don't mind getting stuck every now and then.

So suffice it to say, I will be able to eat lunch today. And maybe even dinner. And maybe breakfast tomorrow. And maybe, just maybe, by that time one of my checks will have cleared because I'm feeling a bit lightheaded....

Wildhorn's Latest Suck-Fest

I've been wanting to see the new musical, Dracula, for some time now, mainly because it stars Tom Hewitt and Melissa Errico. Although I haven't been paying much attention to theater news of late so I had no idea that it was a Frank Wildhorn show. I was wondering what he was up to after that major suck-fest, "The Civil War." Apparently making a bigger suck-fest. As Ben Brantley puts it:

Expectations were exceedingly low for this latest offering from the unstoppable Mr. Wildhorn — the composer of the expensively dressed clunkers "Jekyll and Hyde," "The Scarlet Pimpernel" and "The Civil War" — and expectations have not been disappointed. So go ahead. Take your shots. Say something, if you must, about toothlessness or bloodlessness or the kindness of hammering stakes into the hearts of undead shows. Think of every appropriate variation you can involving the verbs to bite and to suck.

It definitely makes me wish I'd appreciated "Dance of the Vampires" more. A pop-song writer (Jim Steineman, of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" fame) making a cheezy musical about vampires is much more appealing than a cheezy musical writer making a boring serious musical about vampires set to pop-songs.

Cock-A-Doodle-Doo

My friend was visiting from England this week, after having finished his work teaching soccer at a camp in New Hampshire for pre-teen Jewish girls. For the purposes of this tale we'll call him Dickie, mainly because that's his name. So Dickie, Timmy, the boy and I all went out last night for a rockin' good time. At least that's what Dickie wanted. We headed down to the Village for some beer and, um, a rockin' good time. After going to a couple of places, Dickie began to get bummed (i.e. whingy and mopey) because, I believe, the bar we were currently at was clearing out. This was not surprising because this was a Thursday night and contrary to popular belief not everyone in New York has nothing to do on a Friday morning. Granted you can always find a party at any hour, but at 2 am even the Village begins to empty. You need to know where to go to find the action. Now, of course, I knew where to go, but I wasn't about to suggest it. We needed to stumble on it.

So off we went to walk up Avenue A in an attempt to find a decent scene. Dickie continued to whinge that we were walking too far and what was wrong with all the places we'd passed. Of course, if Dickie had looked into any of them he would have seen that they were as empty (if not more so) than the bar we'd just left. (Of course, I must now point out that none of these places were really empty by any measure of the word; they just weren't wall to wall people).

But lo! What's that we see across the street? Loud music and a bunch of people heading in to a darkened bar. I ask Dickie if he wants to check it out. He readily agrees because at that moment a tall, leggy blonde woman whose ass was hanging out of her thong was going in and Dickie said he definitely wanted to check that out. Well, at least he thought it was woman. I'm not saying that I knew Dickie had just suggested that we go into a notoriously seedy gay bar called The Cock and I'm not saying that I didn't know. All I will say is that Dickie is the one who wanted to go in. It's not my fault he was chasing transvestite tail.

Suffice it to say that the look on Dickie's face was priceless when he realized, which didn't take him very long. I'm not sure if it was the snogging men in the corner, the butt-ugly trannies or the man masturbating in nothing but a jock-strap on stage.

I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that Dickie is the nephew of a very high-ranking official with British Intelligence, so if you happen to be a sleezy tabloid I'm willing to sell. Dickie doesn't know this, but I have pictures of him dangerous close to a penis.

Why Are You Here?

One of my favorite things that I like to do with my blog is find out how people get here. I don't get a significant amount of traffic because most of my loyal readers are my friends and I don't employ any rouse to get people to surf on over. But I do have the luxury of looking at referring pages, including what Google searches get people to come on over to my neck of the woods.

Apparently most people who randomly stumble onto this blog via search engines are looking for pictures of the Gotti boys, information on Ed Heeney or for Charisma Carpenter's e-mail address. However, my personal fav is that I am Google's number one match for "doll's head ingestion".

So, if you got here looking for Hotti Gotti pics, homo-nausea or Cordelia Chase, I'm sorry to dissappoint but I hope you stay awhile and poke around here at ThirdoftheMonth. Make yourself at home; we enjoy the company. But if you came looking for some good ol' fashioned anal autoerotic gratification, well then according to Google you've come to the right place.

It doesn't matter why you're here, really, or even how you got here. But since you made it, throw on some plaid, grab a moist towelette and revel in the beauty that is you. Because here, every day is the Third of the Month.

Highfalutin Panhandling

This one goes under the category of "Only In New York"...

So it's about 1:00 am on Sunday night / Monday morning. I've got some friends in town so we're still out, chilling at the Auction House, surprised that we aren't the only people who apparently have nothing to do the next morning. We're standing outside for a smoke (frickin' ban) when this panhandler comes up to us, about the third one all night. Usually they want spare change or a spare fag. Or, if they want to sell you something it's usually magazines or batteries. But not this one. No, this one asks us if we like books. Books! At 1 am. Turns out the man is selling books out of his knapsack in the middle of the night. And not just any books, mind you. No, these are books for a special audience. He was selling Beowulf. And a book on the ancient Chinese art of foot-binding. And a few other titles in that vein. In the middle of night. Now granted, we were at a bar called the Auction House. And we almost actually did by Beowulf but it wasn't a good translation.

Fat and Hippies

So I just got back from Ithaca where I was at a "retreat". Well, a retreat in the scientific sense whereby you go to some remote local with some sort of "nature" (hence the Ithaca) and stay inside, in the dark, all day listening to people talk in excrutiating detail about excrutiatingly detailed topics. The retreat was on the molecular biophysics of signal transduction which means that the topics ranged from lipids to proteins in lipids to proteins modified by lipids to proteins that sense lipids to proteins that make lipids. And phase diagrams.

We did get to stay in the Statler hotel, however, which is staffed by gays and Mormons. They also make the best cheesecake in the world. Not so much with the pastries.

They did let us out for an afternoon which was exciting because I got to see my friend Amy who never comes to visit me in the City because she's a dirty hippy who lives in a co-op with a three-legged cat and tree-huggers with names like "Grasshopper" and will probably write something nasty in my comment box because I've insulted her fragile sensibility and collarbone. She did, however, take me and Deirdre on a hike around Six Mile Creek. "Oh, it's just a short walk," she says. Um, yeah. Anyway, for those of you who don't know Ithaca very well, it is all up-hill. I know this sounds physically impossible but trust me; I walked everywhere and never went down.

So, anyway, we're walking along, getting attacked by dragonflies (I hate bugs, but dragonflies are the worst! They are ugly and nasty and I haven't figured out what they are useful for yet), when Amy realizes she took us a different way than she was planning and we might have to do a "bit of climbing." Um, yeah. Suffice it to say we did manage to scale the cliff we needed to scale in order to get to the naked man. I actually don't know why this 60 year old man was lying naked on a rock, balls to the wind, reading The Nanny Diaries, nor do I know why he gave us a dirty look when we walked by his naked ass. It wasn't like by lying naked he'd laid claim to that rock or anything, like that guy who licks the car door handle in that Volkswagen commercial. I don't know, maybe he didn't want us looking at his dick. Whatever. It's Ithaca. On our way back to campus (up-hill, of course) we passed a guy in his boxers climbing through the second-floor window of his apartment, which of course makes perfect sense. I mean, where are you going to carry your keys if all you're wearing is your underwear?

I was happy to get back to the City, though, even if the boy made me start running this morning. Thirty minutes and eighteen leg cramps later I still felt like crap. Endorphins, my buttocks. But at least I've found a good use for my $100 pair of running shoes. Violently kicking my boyfriend in the ass.

Don't Hate the Player...

... hate boring, pedestrian "scripties"! Reality TV is where it's at! Still!

First, there's The Player, which premiered last night on the UPN. Now, you may ask, what is so original about twenty guys living in a house and trying to win a date with a hot woman via a series of eliminations? What makes The Player different? Well, these guys aren't your average reality TV show contestents; these guys are all Players! That is to say they are overly quaffed and overly muscled and overly full of themselves, some of them to the point where they could jump into a pool fully clothed and their hair wouldn't move. If you can get through the many various urban accents of Dawn (the prize) and the over used "Don't hate the player, hate the game" that is sure to be the next office cooler catch-phrase, check out The Player, if only for my fav playah, J.J., the gotta-be-gay wigger from the West Side (of Phoenix).

And speaking of gotta-be-gay, if you haven't checked out the new season of The Joe Schmo Show on Spike TV then you haven't lived. Instead of a Big Brother-like show, this time they're duping both a man and a woman into believing they're on a reality dating show called "Last Chance For Love" where there are many challenges and "Falcon Twists". The two hour finale is next week. Watch it. And while you're at it, rent the first season which is out on DVD now.

Lastly, since it appears as though every other cable network has a reality show featuring the life of a celebrity, why not A&E? Growing Up Gotti has got to be the biggest disappointment in celebrity reality television. First of all Victoria Gotti is not crazy, a la Anna Nicole; she's kinda just normal. If I wanted to see an ugly middle aged celebrity deal with their job, family and oversensitiveness to their own wacky existence I'd watch Family Business because at least that has titties. The one upside is she's got three hot teenaged boys, if by hot you mean over-tanned, over-gelled and overly bitchy Long Island man-whores. But if all you want to do is ogle underaged spoiled brats, save yourself the trouble of watching the show and check out Hotti Gotti where you can go for all your Gotti boy-toy screensavers. You know you want to....

So remember, just when you thought reality television was dead, the networks (all the networks) have managed to scrap the bottom of the barrel to bring you more of what you crave: man-sluts.

Except I'm serious about Joe Schmo 2. Check that shit out. Like now.

Oh Those Silly Californians...

According to a wonderful article in Slate this week, apparently most SUVs are banned on residential streets in California, due to the fact that they weigh more than 6 tons. Now, I'm torn by this. On the one hand, I hate government involvement in my life. On the other hand, I loathe SUVs, probably because I lived across the street from Kappa Kappa Gamma, where I believe ownership of one was manditory for membership (along with leather high heal knee-high boots which were oh so useful in the New Hampshire winter). And since I don't own one, and never plan to, the government isn't actually involving itself in my life with this one.

However, what I loathe even more than both of those things is people having their cake and eating it too. So, if SUV owners can register their SUVs as trucks, follow different quality regulations than pedestrian vehicles, get tax breaks if they use it for "work" and damage the road just as much as other trucks of that size, why should they be exempt from following traffic regulations other trucks have to? That is, they shouldn't get all the benefits and not have any of the inconveniences.

Of course this also means that those Hummers aren't allowed on the Brooklyn Bridge. I'd love to see that one enforced. No, really, I'd love to see that one enforced. Those fuckers should be inconvenienced. And frequently.

It's the Third of the Month...

... do you know where your moist towelette is?

So, I was in the shower this morning thinking about how long it's been since I've been celebrating this holiday in an official capacity. Believe it or not, the Third of the Month has been around for over six years! That's a lot of moist towelettes! And now, with the Third of the Month online, you can celebrate this noble holiday any day of the week. It's amazing how much we've grown.

I also realized that I've pretty much run out of ways to tell you to be good to yourself and love yourself. Which is fine, because I have other people out there to do it for me. Like NAAFA, the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance, but not fun fat like PUFAs. They want us to accept actual fat people for who they are and not look down on them, even the fat people who stand in the aisle taking pictures and using their fat ass to block your otherwise perfectly good view of a wedding ceremony. But that's great! Fat people are really discriminated against. Of course, like all activists, NAAFA is craaaazzzzy (and probably financially supported by McDonald's), denying a lot of the negative health consequences of being obese and stuff like that. But at least they're trying to feel good about themselves and isn't that what this day is about? Feeling good about yourself?

So whether you're feeling down and out or your life just couldn't be better, take a moment out of your day, just a moment, and think about all of your good qualities. Think about all of the people that love you. Think about how I love you. And I do. Love you. Each and every one of you crazy monkeys. And sometimes I think about how much I love each and every one of you when I think about how much I love myself. And when I'm thinking about loving myself I think about how one of you may be thinking of loving me at the same time. And then I get this warm fuzzy feeling that leaves me dizzy and panting with self-contentment. And that, my friends, is what this day is all about.

Oh, that, and plaid.

A Sad Day For DNA

Francis Crick has died at age 88. This leaves only James Watson left, to spout out cracked nonsensical ramblings such as his belief that obese people over-produce a hormone that makes you happy, as evidence by fat people being jolly. It is, however, a shame that Crick didn't live to see "The Double Helix The Musical" come to fruition...

A Moment Of Silence...

... for my dear beloved Fido.

He departed today from this earth at approximately 4pm EST, after a week-long struggle with ick. This morning it was touch and go but I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that today was his day. I fed him his breakfast but he would be having none of that. He spent most of the morning under a plant, lying on his side, breathing laboriously. Occassionally he would right himself but only for a moment or two. He'd lost most of his luscious shine and his eyes were puffy and swollen. By mid-afternoon the ick had taken over and my poor Fido was no more.

Sonya and Shobana provided the funeral dirge whilst I spake a brief but poignant eulogy, holding back my tears, as we slowly marched our way down the hallway to the men's room. I went in alone (considering Sonya and Shobana are both of the female persuassion and balked at the idea of entering that most holy of male places) and as I said my final goodbyes gave my dearest Fido a proper burial at sea, a burial he truly, deeply deserved.

Requiescat In Pacem, Fideus

Slipped Under The Radar

In the wake of the failure of the FMA to even get a real debate in the Senate, House Republicans have slipped passed one of the most asinine bills I've ever read, and it hasn't been getting a terrible lot of press. Afraid that a court will strike down the DOMA, they've decided to try to strip those courts of deciding the constitutionality of the DOMA with H.R. 3313, which states:

No court created by Act of Congress shall have any jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction, to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, section 1738C [the Defense of Marriage Act] or this section.

So let me get this straight, venerable Representatives: because your attempt to exclude homosexuals from marriage by enshrining it in the Constitution via an amendment failed miserably, you've decided to make it constitutional by not allowing anyone to question whether or not it is. Oh, and because of that little phrase "or this section", no one can question the constitutionality of not letting anyone question the constitutionality of the DOMA. Which is funny, of course, because according to that Constitution, specifically Article 3, Section 2, H.R. 3313 is, um, blatantly unconstitutional.

Way to go guys! This attempt to subvert the constitution and the will of the people, especially future generations, strikes me as, um, what should I call it? Oh, right, legislative activism. Now granted, it all doesn't really matter because this won't make it passed the Senate; I'm just amused at how desparate Congress is acting. Don't they have a war on terror to conduct and a middle eastern nation to rebuild?

Nothing To Say...

I just felt like blogging today but I've been working hard and haven't had much time to be interesting. Well, I did go to Beers of the World yesterday, an annual grad school picnic where I used to stay at for hours, get plastered and wake up drunk the next morning. Didn't this time. I must be getting old. I did get to drink Tecate in cans, however.

Oh, and I've been watching Joss Whedon's "Firefly," even though I swore I would boycott all things Whedon after that Angel finale debacle. It's actually surprisingly good. But I've figured out why it tanked (aside from the insto-death time slot of 8pm Fridays): the title sequence sucks, especially the crappy song. You can't have a successful TV show with a shitty opening. Well, maybe it was ok for "Friends," but still....

If This Is Substantiated...

... it's a big "fuck you" to everyone, especially Michael Moore (who apparently misrepresented and doctored a newspaper editorial for his film (thanks Andrew)). Of course, if it pans out it might mean that Bush will actually gain some more credibility and win the election, and I'm still not sure if I want that to happen.

Go IRT!

The Straphangers just rated the subways and what line do you think got the highest rating? Huh? Huh? Da 6. I love my subway line, even though it sometimes only runs in the downtown direction or not at all. But, to quote Madonna and every angsty emo/punk/pop band on the planet, nobody's perfect.

A Trip To The Movies...

Since it was a rainy, nasty day yesterday, we decided to catch an early showing of Spiderman, which was of course entertaining but didn't show enough shots of Tobey Maguire's cute little, nevermind. Anyway, like most movie experiences on E 86th St., someone managed to royally piss off the audience. (And if you don't know what I'm talking about, try going to that theater to watch the new Blade flick on opening night.)

Now, I'm not about to make any assumptions about the intelligence level of your average theater attendant, but you really don't need to be all that aggressive a thinker to know that letting a five-year-old into a movie theater with a helium balloon is not the greatest idea in the world. You see, as we (and others) were waiting patiently for our $10.25 movie to begin, said child (who managed to get passed the razor-sharp security) lost his grip on said balloon. Now this resulting in two distinct, yet related situations, namely a) a balloon bobbing up and down in front of the movie screen and b) an upset child who had lost said balloon and was making it known to the rest of the theater, loudly, and without much in the way of actual vocabulary.

But our tale of helium woes has just begun. About every ten minutes the balloon, which thankfully prefered to remain close to the ceiling, would make a cameo appearance on-screen. But lo! during a stirring speech by Dr. Octopus the balloon floated closer and closer to the ground, eliciting cries of "grab it! grab it!" from the crowd. A virtuous young lady, heeding those calls, leapt up from her front row seat and snatched the offending balloon and destroying it. She was greeted by much applause. Applause which, unfortunately, had it's own nasty side effects, namely setting off an applause chain reaction, not unlike Doc Ock's self-sustaining fusion reaction which used the unrealistically solid substance of tritium. This audience started clapping at everything! Aw, they kissed. Clap clap clap. Wow, Spiderman did something cool! Clap clap clap. Hey, great use of a classic Hollywood musical score! Clap clap clap.

Needless to say, it was an enjoyably campy romp through summer blockbuster spendor as seen in the Big City. Go see the movie; it's well worth it. And try to figure out how and why they appear to have taken a quick jaunt to Chi-Town...

It's Good To Be Me

It's a beautiful day in New York today, so I took a two hour lunch. I took some sushi and some Silver Bullet in a brown paper bag and sat outside in the park by Sotheby's (who's Teamsters are picketing, by the way), enjoying the sun and air. And I ain't got no one to answer to. Of course, it's days like today that make it clear I'm never graduating....

All Things Gay

I'm not entirely sure how fitting it is that the FMA was killed before it even got off the ground on Bastille Day. However, I do consider it interesting that Bill O'Reilly didn't mention it once (although I'm not sure when his show is taped), but did mention that residents of Palm Beach successfully sued to get a nativity placed next to the menorah under the heading "Traditionalist Victory" while also reaffirming his boycott of all things French and my dangling participles. I'd like someone to prove that his shampoo was made in France, because you know they all are. My dangling participles, however, are American. Although I think Jon Stewart best summed up the raving hysteria of Rick Sanatorum when he said that sodomy must be a very powerful thing since apparently penis and ass contact must form a super-genetalia that emits a massive culture-eroding ray, causing children to be born out of wedlock...

And speaking of Canada, the Yukon now has gay marriage, which begs the question "There are gay people in the Yukon?" Which of course begs an even bigger question; "There are people in the Yukon?"

Doll's Head "Bezoar"

Oh, yes, that does say doll's head bezoar, a tangled mass of indigestable material made up of a doll's head. You'd think that it would be obvious that a Barbie doll's head would be indigestable. And it was obvious to a 35-year-old man who last year ingested multiple doll's heads. On purpose. Most people won't be able to follow the link, so I've reprinted most of the article from the American Journal of Roentgenology. Pay special attention to the bold (my emphases).

A 35-year-old man presented with severe abdominal pain and distention but normal vital signs. An abdominal radiograph showed multiple rounded objects, some of which projected in the shape of a head with a pointed nose. Suspecting a case of "body packing", we questioned the patient as to whether he had ingested packets filled with illicit drugs for the purpose of smuggling. However, the patient stated that he had ingested multiple heads of a popular children's toy doll over the course of several days. He declared that swallowing dolls' heads was his habit for anal autoerotic gratification. The patient's hospital course was uneventful after surgery for mechanical small-bowel obstruction....

In this case of small-bowel obstruction resulting from craniocervical dissociation of a doll, common search patterns used to detect atlantooccipital distraction injury do not apply. Radiographically, dolls' heads do not show a clear basion–dens interval or posterior axial line. A denslike structure that has a cylindric convexity connects the doll's cranium to the doll's body in a hinge joint. The entire head of the doll, including nose and hair, are radiodense. Familiarity with the radiographic appearance of this famous American doll may help to differentiate the foreign bodies in the bowel of our patient from packages of illicit drugs ingested by body packers.

Motives for ingestion of foreign bodies vary greatly. To our knowledge, ingestion of dolls' heads for anal autoerotic gratification has not been described previously. Most ingested foreign bodies pass the small and large bowels without serious consequence, and patients seek medical help only if the passage is impeded at anatomic narrowings. Body packers smuggle illicit drugs (such as cocaine or heroin) in multiple ingested packages and may present as a toxicologic emergency with life-threatening symptoms caused by a leaking substance from a broken package. Rectal foreign bodies rarely come from ingestion but more commonly are the result of conscious insertion.

Radiographic detection of the characteristic nose and the unique features of the craniocervical junction of famous dolls may serve as a clue to identify the doll radiographically, even if located in the bowel of an individual. This case illustrates how icons of popular culture affect all aspects of life and can present emergently to the radiologist, who should keep in mind that human imagination may not follow clinical algorithms.

Seriously, whatever happened to good old-fashioned auto-erotic asphyxiation?

F*cking Kabbalah

It's the simplest recipe for success. You're a pop megastar with a twenty year career, something like 60 million albums sold, at least 50 hit singles and an athletic body that looks at least fifteen years younger than your age. You have millions of fans ready to shell out upwards of $300 a ticket for a concert. You've got billions of dollars of personal assets, access to the best choreographers, producers, promotors and videographers in the world and a stadium in every major city willing to let you play. All you have to do is play some old favorites, remix a few songs to spice things up and grind your breasts against half-naked male dancers and your fans will be screaming for more all night and into the wee hours of the morning.

Or you could do what Madonna did with her "Re-Invention Tour"...

I don't think there's any good place to begin, other than the beginning. Madonna (Esther) rises on stage in a toned-down version of her bustier days and does some yoga to "Vogue". We stayed seated because we were wating for her to warn us up. After a song that nobody seemed to recognize (which Madonna must have figured because she kept flashing the lyrics up on the screen) she stood in front of a mike stand and sang "Frozen" while a Chris Cunningham video played in the background. I hate that song but would have forced myself to get into it if I had known that it was just going to go down hill from there.

I'm not entirely sure when she lost me. It may have been her electric guitar rendition of "Material Girl". Or maybe it was when the wimple- and burkha-clad women came dancing with her on the catwalk during "American Life." Or possibly when she broke into a jazz version (a jazz version!) of "Deeper and Deeper." It's entirely possible that it was during her horribly choreographed rendition of "Die Another Day" which ended with her being strapped into an electric chair (an electric chair!) and having to endure a song from Evita, and not one of the popular songs you'd recognize immediately either (and believe me, if anyone should have recognized it, it should have been me).

It could have been at any one of those moments. But I know which moment got her heckled (by people other than us, who were doing our fair share of heckling). It was when she informed us that she was about to perform a "no-sitting down song" (and if you have to tell your audience not to sit, you're doing something wickedly wrong) and she broke into "Like a Prayer." I don't know what the hell she did to it but that song was more exciting when I used to listen to it on cassette in my old Buick Skylark with one broken speaker than being performed live by Madonna in a 20,000 seat stadium. Maybe it was the slower than natural tempo or the entirely un-ironic beating Sacred Heart and crucified Christ looming behind her. But my guess was that it led into a cover of a song that, and I quote the material girl verbatim, "was written 35 years ago but sounds like it could have been written today." Oh yes, my brothers and sisters, Madonna/Esther serenaded us with "Imagine" (yes, that "Imagine") while we were subjected to images of impoverished Palestinian children and starving Africans, ending in a commercial (a commercial!) for SpiritualityForKids.org. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the great Madonna was booed. Unfortunately not off-stage. Although I am curious to know if she appreciated the irony of singing the line "don't tell me to stop"...

I don't mean to be too negative, though. There were some highlights. We got to hear "Burning Up", a great version of "Crazy For You" and "Hanky-Panky", which unfortunately wasn't nearly as dirty as it should have been. But where was "Like a Virgin", "Ray of Light" and "Beautiful Stranger"? Where was the energy?

I'll tell you where the energy got into sucked to: Kabbalah.

Our evening was summed up best as we were forced to trek through the ghetto to get to the subway and were stopped by a homeless man asking for change. The boy replied: "Sorry, I just gave all my money to Madonna, but believe me it would've been better spent giving it all to you."

Paging Dr. Freud...

So I had a dream last night that I had to urinate very badly and in my dream I found a bathroom and pee'd for eight solid minutes. Does this dream mean anything significant? Maybe about my sex life? Or my mother? Or does it have to do with the fact that I woke up having to pee like a racehorse? Anyone? Anyone?

The Third of the Month, Explained

Some of my loyal readers have been wondering about the meaning of the Third of the Month. They ask me, Michael, what exactly is this Third of the Month thing? Why do you want every day to be the Third of the Month? Why not the sixth of the month? Or the twenty-third?

Well, loyal fans, it's quite simple to explain and not at all as interesting as you think it may be. All will not be revealed today because like all good mysteries the mystery of the Third of the Month is an enigma that, once de-enigmatized, is no longer an enigma.

Suffice it to say, The Third of the Month is, at it's heart, a euphamism; a euphamism for something that we all do and those of us who don't are usually lying about. But it is more, so much more, than that. It fills a void in our holiday-lite calendars. It gives us a well needed excuse to do something we shouldn't need an excuse to do, appreciate ourselves. All too often we get caught up in our hectic daily lives, too much so to cherish our own existences. As the old saying goes, I know I'm someone cause God don't make no dirt! (neglecting for the moment, that if God did make everything in the universe, and dirt being a part of the universe, that he did, in fact make dirt so maybe you really aren't somebody afterall you worthless piece of camel offal and I just got off-track, sorry) and we often forget that we are someone. The Third of the Month is a helpful reminder.

But the goal of this blog, it's mission if you will, is to make us appreciate ourselves each and every day; to get us to forget about what is so special about the Third of the Month because out of habit we treat each and every day as if it were.

But Michael, you say, why the Third of the Month? And exactly what does that date have to do with self-gratification? And why, for the love of God, does it have to involve plaid?

Well, kiddies, that's a story for another day....

Happy (Belated) Third of the Month!

Those of you who were with me this weekend know that I had very little time to celebrate the Third of the Month in typical TotM fashion. Oh don't get me wrong, I celebrated myself but it was far from typical. I rang in my Third of the Month already trashed, after a kick-ass over-indulgent meal at The River Cafe for the boy's birthday and our "anniversary". Touristy? Yup. Awesome view? You bet. But was the food worth it? Every blessed cent I spent.

Little did I know, however, that I would get to indulge in my wonderfulness so much more, later on, at the Pyramid. Hot eighties music, hot guys and friends buying me drinks. Who could ask for anything more? There was even high drama (stolen purse of a friend) that I remained blissfully unaware of as I danced the night away....

This weekend was also full of celebration goodies in the form of my most perfect Fourth of the Month. First, I got to see Riker's Island for the first time from the water. Then I got to see my darling Mets sweep the Evil Empire, even if the game was played under protest. And then, I celebrated the wonderfulness of myself and my country while watching the fireworks launched from the Statue of Liberty from a 33rd floor apartment in Battery Park City in soupful awe.

But that was then and this is now. Today is a beautiful day, so if you didn't take time out of your busy weekend to honor and love yourself, take time away from the election and the war and Michael Moore and worrying about falling out windows or having cars drive into your roof, if you haven't realized your full beauty, intelligence and sheer potential lately, if you haven't looked at yourself in the mirror and realized that out of all the improbabilities in the Universe that it chose you to be right here, right now and as awesome as you are and not some sea slug or garden weed or Mark Sommers, if you haven't done that yet, then get your ass home and celebrate yourself! A lot! Because gosh darn it, you deserve it!

Me, I'm going to go home early today to do laundry so I've got plenty of plaid tonight. Of course, not before I swing by the cafeteria and swipe some moist towellettes....